THIRD LETTER, &c. MY DEAR SIR, I HOPE this is the last letter you will receive from me on Church matters. I am tired of the subject; so are you ; so is every body. In spite of many Bishops' charges, I am unbroken; and remain entirely of the same opinion as I was two or three years since-that the mutilation of Deans and Chapters is a rash, foolish, and imprudent measure. I do not think the charge of the Bishop of London successful, in combating those arguments which have been used against the impending Dean and Chapter Bill; but it is quiet, gentlemanlike, temperate, and written in a manner which entirely becomes the high office and character which he bears. I agree with him in saying that the Plurality and Residence Bill is, upon the whole, a very good Bill;nobody, however, knows better than the Bishop of London the various changes it has undergone, and the improvements it has received. I could point out fourteen or fifteen very material alterations for the better since it came out of the hands of the Commission, and all bearing materially upon the happiness and comfort of the parochial Clergy. I will mention only a few:- the Bill, as originally introduced, gave the Bishop a power, when he considered the duties of the parish to be improperly performed, to suspend the Clergymen and appoint a Curate with a salary. Some impious person thought it not impossible that occasionally such a power might be maliciously and vindictively exercised, and that some check to it should be admitted into the Bill; accordingly, under the existing act, an Ecclesiastical Jury is to be summoned, and into that jury the defendant Clergyman may introduce a friend of his own. If a Clergyman, from illness or any other overwhelming necessity, were prevented from having two services, he was exposed to an information, and penalty. In answering the Bishop, he was subjected to two opposite sets of penalties the one for saying Yes; the other for saying No: he was amenable to the needless and impertinent scrutiny of a Rural Dean before he was exposed to the scrutiny of the Bishop. Curates might be forced upon him by subscribing parishioners, and the certainty of a schism established in the parish; a Curate might have been forced upon present incumbents by the Bishop without any complaint made; upon men who took, or, perhaps, bought, their livings under very different laws; all these acts of injustice are done away with, but it is not to the credit of the framers of the Bill that they were ever admitted, and they completely justify the opposition with which the Bill was received by me and by others. I add, however, with great pleasure, that when these and other objections were made, they were heard with candour, and promised to be remedied by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London and Lord John Russell. I have spoken of the power to issue a Commission to inquire into the wellbeing of any parish: a vindictive and malicious Bishop might, it is true, convert this, which was intended for the protection, to the oppression of the Clergy- - afraid to dispossess a Clergyman of his own authority, he might attempt to do the same thing under the cover of a jury of his ecclesiastical creatures. But I can hardly conceive such baseness in the prelate, or such infamous subserviency in the agents. An honest and respectable Bishop will remember that the very issue of such a Commission is a serious slur upon the character of a Clergyman; he will do all he can to prevent it by private monition and remonstrance; and if driven to such an act of power, he will of course state to the accused Clergyman the subjects of accusation, the names of his accusers, and give him ample time for his defence. If upon anonymous accusation he subjects a Clergyman to such an investigation, or refuses to him any advantage which the law gives to every accused person, he is an infamous, degraded, and scandalous tyrant: but I cannot believe there is such a man to be found upon the bench. There is in this new Bill a very humane clause (though not introduced by the Commission), enabling the widow of the deceased clergyman to retain possesssion of the parsonage house for two months after the death of the Incumbent. It ought, in fairness, to be extended to the heirs, executors, and administrators of the Incumbent. It is a great hardship that a family settled in a parish for fifty years perhaps, should be torn up by the roots in eight or ten days; and the interval of two months, allowing time for repairs, might put to rest many questions of dilapidation. To the Bishop's power of intruding a Curate without any complaint on the part of the parish that the duty has been inadequately performed, I retain the same objections as before. It is a power which without this condition will be unfairly and partially exercised. The first object I admit is not the provision of the Clergyman, but the care of the parish: but one way of taking care of parishes is to take care that clergymen are not treated with tyranny, partiality, and injustice: and the best way of effecting this is to remember that their superiors have the same human passions as other people; and not to trust them with a power which may be so grossly abused, and which (incredible as the Bishop of London may deem it) has been, in some instances, grossly abused. I cannot imagine what the Bishop means by saying, that the members of Cathedrals do not in virtue of their office bear any part in the parochial instruction of the people. This is a fine deceitful word, the word parochial, and eminently calculated to coax the public. If he means simply that Cathedrals do not belong to parishes, that St. Paul's is not the parish church of |